Saturday Night Out: A Bear Affair and a Trash Landing

If anything can draw a crowd in New York City, it's a 23-foot bright yellow teddy bear with a lamp on its head. On Saturday night, uptown socialites joined downtown hipsters at Park Avenue's Seagram Plaza for Christie's The Bear Party, hosted by real estate tycoon Aby Rosen and art aficionado Gavin Brown. The center of attention was of course, the ginormous bear, a work by Swiss artist Urs Fischer, which will be auctioned off on Wednesday for an estimated $10 million. Pigs in blankets and mini grilled cheese sandwiches were served up to the guests, including Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld and Giovanna Battaglia, who were extending last Thursday night's art-kick, as well as model Hannah Holman (pictured left), Lauren Remington Platt in pink Christian Dior and Brett Gorvy, the head of Post-War Contemporary Art at Christie's. Gorvy's attraction to the bear goes beyond the auction: "I love seeing the public's response. They completely understand it as something that is significant, but then they question it. Is this their teddy bear that they love or is this a teddy bear that is being electrocuted under a gas lamp?" Platt showed up out of sheer curiosity: "I actually had no idea what this was, so that is why I came."

The artsy Saturday night out continued downtown at Maccarone + Gavin Brown's Enterprise in the West Village with the opening of Nate Lowman's exhibit Trash Landing. The title, Lowman explained, was inspired by a news story about a guy who tried to kill himself and landed in a pile of trash. "That was the headline of both The Daily News and The Post, and they always have corny headlines but they are never the same. It's an obvious bad joke and it just seemed like a good title." Lowman's opening, with works depicting the Statue of Liberty, a smoggy Los Angeles freeway and a flood in Brazil, among others, drew a stylish crowd who came to scope out the art: Hope Atherton, Olympia Scarry, Terry Richardson and a Céline-clad Laure Heriard Dubreuil, who said her favorite piece of the night was the colorful Mount Vesuvius.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Harper's BAZAAR participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.